COMMENT: This passage resonates strongly with my own experience: that as a child my heart was open and warm but at points throughout growing-up and adult life I felt a very strong temptation to close and harden my heart; and indeed made strenuous attempts to achieve this; and indeed for exactly the reason of believing that completing the process and remaining alienated would bring me the greatest happiness - because then I would be independent of circumstances. As this progressed, however, I became increasingly alienated from authentic existence and engaged in numerous behaviours that injured my relationship with others. From this I was, more than once, by good fortune and my failure to have completed the corruption, rescued - several times by a temporary stay, then by a potentially permanent re-birth.